After five years largely devoted to
this single project, I still find myself much too close to it to
look at it very objectively. Also, it is now obvious that there
is far more in 2001 than I realized when we were making it; perhaps
more indeed, than even Stanley Kubrick, its principal creator, had
intended.

It is true that we set out with the
deliberate intention of creating a myth. (The Odyssean parallel
was clear in our minds from the very beginning, long before the
title of the film was chosen.) A myth has many elements, including
the religious ones. Quite early in the game I went around saying,
not very loudly, "M-G-M doesn't know this yet, hut they're paying
for the first $10,000,000 religious movie." Nevertheless, it is
still quite a surprise to see how many people realized this, and
it has been amusing to see how many faiths have tried to stake claims
in the finished work. Several reviewers have seen a cross in some
of the astronomical scenes; this is purely a matter of camera composition.
I might also mention that we have recently discovered-this was quite
a shock--that there is a Buddhist sect which worships a large, black,
rectangular slab. The analogy of the Kaaba has also been mentioned;
though I certainly never had it in mind at the time, the fact that
the Black Stone sacred to the Muslims is reputed to be a meteorite
is a more than interesting coincidence.

All the mythical elements in the film--intentional
and otherwise-help to explain the extraordinarily powerful responses
that it has evoked from audiences and reviewers. In this we have
been successful beyond our wildest drearns--certainly beyond minel
I have now read hundreds of reviews from newspapers and magazines
all over the world (the most important of these, together with much
other material, have appeared in New American Library's The Making
of Kubrick's 2001, edited by Jerome B. Agel), and a pretty clear
pattern of critical reaction is emerging.

A small number of reviewers said,
even at first screening, that the movie was a masterpiece and a
landmark in the history of the cinema. (Some have remarked flatly
that it is "obviously" one of the most important movies ever made.)
Another small but significant proportion didn't like it the first
time, wrote rather critical reviews, brooded for some days, went
to see it again, and then wrote second reviews which were not only
recantations but sometimes raves. This is the typical reaction to
a new and revolutionary work of art (vide the first peformance
of The Rite of Spring), but in the past this process of evaluation
took years or decades. I remember saying to Kubrick that he was
luckier than Melville, who never lived to see the world appreciate
Moby Dick.

Moby Dick, of course, has been
mentioned many times in connection with 2001; though it is
asking for trouble to make such comparisons, I had this work consciously
in mind as a prototype (viz., the use of hard technology to construct
a launch pad for metaphysical speculations). It took about half
a century before literary criticism caught up with Melville; I wonder
how many college theses are now being written on 2001.

Perhaps the majority of reviews were
favorable but somewhat baffled, while another minority group was
vociferously hostile. But this very hostility proves the emotional
impact of the film; that acute critic Damon Knight (who has written
that 2001 is "undoubtedly one of the best films ever made")
considers that the extraordinarily obtuse reaction of some science-fiction
critics was simply due to embarrassment. They just couldn't face
the film's religious implications.

There are others who, quite understandably,
expected an updated Destination Moon and were baffled by
Kubrick's version. But both time and the box office will prove that
Kubrick was perfectly correct (indeed, the latter has already done
so, for in almost all countries the film has been a fantastic commercial
success). To have done a straightforward documentary-type movie--at
the very moment when men were preparing to land on the Moon!--would
have been to invite disaster, and would have provided no sort of
artistic challenge. George Pal's Destination Moon was magnificent
for 1950; we were interested in starting where that finished.

Soon after the movie was released,
and the first cries of bafflement were being heard in the land,
I made a remark that horrified the M-G-M top brass. "If you understand
2001 on the first viewing," I stated,"we will have failed."
I still stand by this remark, which does not mean that one can't
enjoy the movie completely the first time around. What I meant was,
of course, that because we were dealing with the mystery of the
Universe, and with powers and forces greater than man's comprehension,
then by definition they could not be totally understandable. Yet
there is at least one logical structure--and sometimes more than
one--behind everything that happens on the screen in 2001,
and the ending does not consist of random enigmas, some simple-minded
critics to the contrary. (You will find my interpretation in the
novel; it is not necessarily Kubrick's. Nor is his necessarily the
"right" one--whatever that means.)

2001 has already become part
of fiIm history; it is the first science-fiction movie to do so,
and its success has been so overwhelming that it poses the embarrassing
problem "Where do we go from here?" in a particularly acute form.
Yet in a very few years it will probably seem old-fashioned, and
people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

As for the dwindling minority who
still don't like it, that's their problem, not ours. Stanley
and I are laughing all the way to the bank.

POSTSCRIPT

A much fuller account of the making
of the film, together with material which was never used in the
final version, will be found in The Lost Worlds of 2001 (New
York: New American Library, 1972).